Tuesday, September 30, 2008

HTML Giant is a thing Gene Morgan approached me about doing, 'approached,' we wanted to do a website that focuses the indie press and online writing news in a central format, sort of like Pitchfork or Bookslut or Gawker for online writing and indie presses only, bringing the goods and becoming things, it will continue to become things, it will have internet writing related news outside of the big press related news blogs, things will happen, I will eat a sandcastle in my parents' basement,

We will feature writers and journals and such, if you have things to say about it there is htmlgiant [at] gmail [dot] com, I'd prefer no emails to my private email my balls are on top of the Sears Tower, I realized the other day that Gene is the dad of the internet, I will call him Dad from now on, there is a lot on the site already, we are going to slowly leak until we have eaten a conch shell the size of somewhere, more is planned and brimming, there are lots of good writers also blogging the news already, they wear derby hats in their room when they are writing, it is required, they must also wear translucent pants and cry a lot.

Please check it out and bookmark and get fed.

I am live inside Whole FoodsI sat next down to a dude where there was a place to plug in my laptopHe looked at me and stood upThen he leftHeyI have enough gas here to last through the end of the week, all the gas stores are fuckedThey have been for about a week On Saturday I got gammed on long islands at the bar at Applebee's for a jokeThere was a chubby ex-fratboy at a table with his titty wife and their two very young kids they looked like 4 or 5It was 1030 at nightThe whole family was dressed in redUGA was getting their ass kicked, they were down by almost 30 at the end of the thirdStill every time UGA completed a pass or something the father clapped really loud and shouted positive thingsHe said stuff like 'Bout time boys!' and 'Now we're talkin!'When UGA scored the mother made sure the children both stopped drawing on the placemats and looked at the screen too and clapped and smiled and said WooTheir dedication was steadfast and powerfulI drank the long island iced teas for 2.5 a pop and looked aroundThe family sometimes seemed very close to me and sometimes seemedvery far away and sometimes they seemed just the distance they really were away

All I really want to think about is RICKY'S ANUS it has 20k words so far, Ricky's body is filling out, it is 'my best work,' no one else will think so I will read it aloud to myself in a small room and say hi to the children across from me in the Whole Foods wearing the berets.

Monday, September 29, 2008

Last night I read 3/4ths of Samuel Delany's HOGG, I will finish it tonight. It is about a rapist for hire named Hogg and this 12 year old boy he brings around with him who sucks his cock and drinks his piss all the time. Hogg and 2 other dudes go gang raping, they have 3 clients, women who did somebody wrong, they fuck them and each other, there is a lot of shit eating and piss drinking and cock destruction.

The book was written over a 4 year span, I don't know why it took him this long to write, but the 3rd of the three hired rapes is written in a more Lish-y way for some reason, and is the best part of the book, it has an air about it that the rest of the book doesn't quite, I would pass out this section of the book in a class on literary violence, I would like to take or teach that class.

Here's a quote, it is explicit:

She tried to push the nigger away, gasping and crying out and biting off the gasps. She had a lot of black hair on her cunt. The nigger yanked up one leg; you could see the raw pussy hanging through like skirt steak. The wop grabbed her other leg--and even though he still had the knife, she struggled pretty hard. The nigger, his mouth wide, squatted, grabbed her over the other leg, and pushed his face into her. I saw the muscles tighten along the back of his jaw.

She screamed, loud, and flung her head back and then down, and beat his head, clawed his ears, her head flopping, around, back, and forth, her mouth still wide and all the breath running out. She roared in more air, and screamed again, beating his back with her heel.

Hogg's dirty fist turned on the head of his dick. Urine welled over his knuckles and dripped. Some ran down his testicles, making a dark, shiny tongue along his right pants leg.

Yeah, it's about like that for 250 pages. FC2.

Overall, it's not all that, it's an engrossing read for some reason but I feel like it could be outdone pretty easily. I will outdo HOGG soon. I read DHALGREN years ago and didn't feel that impressed by it either, I like idea about it, I don't know.

Sunday, September 28, 2008

Where is 'Couesin Larry'Where is 'Coursin Larry'Nothing happened to it yet yetWhere is 'Couesin Larry'

I saw a guy get hit by a truck last night, his head made a flood of tea, there were dogs lapping at the tea, the glare in the McDonald's sign went tinted slightly from the gyration of the blood on the air

God, RICKY'S ANUS, Ricky's body is becoming

Got 2 new books in the mail yesterday, one pornographic novel I should have read by now that I will discuss once I have an opinion, I have high hopes, I am a doubter, I haven't been able to pay attention to books lately, I hope these will help, the other is James Boice's MVP, I read an excerpt from Boice's forthcoming novel in the new Salt Hill, I really liked it, it actually felt DFWian without trying too hard to be DFWian, I had had MVP on my buy list for a while, after I read that excerpt I made it happen, I have high hopes, I am trying not to be a doubter

I REALLY WANT TO WRITE A LONG DIATRIBE-STYLE POST ABOUT HOW THE NEWEST RELEASE BY THIS ONE INDIE PRESS WHICH IS A WORK BY A SEMI FAMOUS AUTHOR IS AN EXAMPLE OF INADVERTENT REPRESSION AND ANTI FREE THINKING AND DESTRUCTIVE TO THE GENERAL WAY IN A MENTALLY DAMAGING QUASI BARACK OBAMA FAUX GLIMMER OF LIGHT, I'm not going to do it though because I don't want to get my panties dirty and I don't want to make so much noise now, I just want to be inner-violent in a pastel condition which will divert itself through my mental sternum

Rewatched Todd Solondz's PALINDROMES the other day, it is supposedly a sequel to WELCOME TO THE DOLLHOUSE, it has recurring characters, it did the 'several actors of varying size and shape and gender play the main character' before I'M NOT THERE did it, the character ranges from being played by a very young black girl who talks with an extreme lisp, an effeminate young boy, Jennifer Jason Leigh, an extreme large black woman, a preteen white girl, another girl, it had a lot of laughs that would make other people uncomfortable, I like how Solondz is the only director I know of who can have characters who talk in extreme POV ways on 'issues' and yet it doesn't feel like the director is trying to be something, I wonder what he is doing now, PALINDROMES features a rescue home of malformed or sick children who form a Christian pop group, moreso it is about abortion, it has Dr. Dan, it was fun to watch some

I watched the titles to the Shining in HD last night on an hd TV I need an HD TV it was totally wowwww owwwww I fell asleep to NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 5 and had a dream that all of my dvds were on the lawn at my parents house in long racks because we'd moved the house innards outside, I wanted them back in, no one would help me, the sun was low in the sky there was a weird light, a van full of men pulled up and got out, I knew they were going to try to take my DVDs, I put one of the racks in the back of a white Jeep Cherokee, the men were all standing around me on the driveway not saying anything and not going for the DVDs, they were just looking at me with no expression, there was an extreme anxiety in me, they would not act and yet always seemed about to, I found an aluminum softball bat, I hit one of them in the face, it impacted the middle of his face and made a soft nudge between his eyes under which there was metal but he didn't flinch, the impact made a steely sound but did not bowl the man over, the bat shook in my hands, the men just kept standing there, I hit another one of the men, the same thing happened, there was something in their white van, the light was weird, I couldn't make anything happen, they were just watching me and I was afraid for my DVDs the most

Then they were gone and there was a guy I used to know in the street, I was dressed in a suit to go to high school, I was late, it was raining in the weird light now, the guy in the street wanted me to stop and talk to him, he was angry at me and seemed unraveled as if he could do anything at any moment, we talked, he maintained neutral anger, I was afraid he would do something to my parents when I left, he started up a hill and I got in a car and followed him trying to talk, we were both going very fast all of a sudden and shouting back at each other, the guy had a weird smeared look on his face, like he had hives, we came to a curve in the road and I turned but he did not and the wooden lip on the street threw him into a person's yard, in the yard there were little girls playing with their mother, the guy was bleeding, the wooden lip of the yard had these huge nails in it that had ripped his clothes and ripped huge gashes out of his flesh, he was bleeding from the head, the girls and the mother were looking, my friend got up and started toward them, he was naked from the waist down, his dick was hanging out in front of the girls, I saw him from behind him with the dick hanging down between his legs and the girls thereon further and his blood in his hair, I didn't know what to do, the mother went inside and left the girls outside, I made the guy sit down the blood was coming out of him a whole lot I used these cloths that were all over the place, I couldn't make the blood stop, the guy was watching me smiling, the girls were coming toward us in the yard

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Got contributor copies of the new HARPUR PALATE today, they printed my story TOUR OF THE DROWNED NEIGHBORHOOD, another from SCORCH ATLAS, using caps makes UNIT ACHE in a good way. The issue's gots good folks like T.J. Forrester, Jacob Appel, Denise Duhamel, a lot of new names to me, new names, my eyes are, mm, this is the story that FAULTLINE tried to BOINK IN THE REAR and yet here it is printed INTACT AND FULL DELICIOUSLESSNESSLY. IT'S FOR SALE NOW.

I started a new novel two days ago, it is called RICKY'S ANUS, it is about Ricky and his body parts and his mother and his mother's house. It is aggressive in tone and mostly of dream logic and nasty emo violence and it is probably already on the verge of if not completely unpublishable in a normative sense except by someone of grand vision, though it has narrative and is very sexy, I don't care. I am already having the most fun writing I have had in years writing this thing, making yourself laugh is good, for more than a week I had just been sitting staring at the keyboard wanting to throw up on it and now I am throwing up into it, but it feels like new throw up and anyway it is making my eyes bulge, RICKY'S ANUS is going to explode, I like to talk out loud to myself about RICKY'S ANUS, I feel good about it, it fulfills what Wallace was calling for in his essay THE NATURE OF THE FUN, to write from a place that you enjoy, because that is why you started writing in the first place, thank you brother Markus for reminding me to reread that essay.

It is a long way in the future, but I am going to be reading at the Quickies! reading series in Chicago on February 12 during AWP, with Peter Markus (thank you again P), Robert Lopez, Brian Evenson, Kim Chinquee, and Janet Desaulniers. I will wear my pee pants to that one, I will be crying in my under life before I get there and going apeshit in my banana yard as I pretend I have any business among all that wonder.

Looks like No Colony is going to have an AWP table split with NOO Journal and Publishing Genius, we are getting our dunk tank together and a couple of shorties to shred black metal riffs on pedestals behind our table, if not that then at least we will be loud and drunk and have something sickening happening, I suggested to Adam Robinson I dress up as Gordon Lish and sign books and Adam said he would dress up as Ray Carver and sign books and I could cross out his signature and make mine on top of it, regardless, we will have our Shenises on (have you seen this shenis?) and things will happen requiring great intestinal fortitude of our aisle mates, who will hopefully be the Paris Review and like Poetry magazine (does Poetry go to that shit, aren't they building a warhead)?

Monday, September 22, 2008

Because I can't quite make my head stay unshitted, here's another answer to questions that resulted in Googlers finding my blog while looking for answers from Dr. Internet.

It's really just me being immature or something, duh.

(from India, 9/20/2008 7:21:15 AM)

Q: how to find out a vegina whether it is fucked or not

A: Kim Kardashian's pussy made meatloaf every morning in the summer house where I grew up. She sat paper muffins on each side of the container where my knees would knock while we bred cats. Hmmm was all she'd ever say, and her lips made the kitchen portraits of dad's wart-back change complexion. The sweat would pour out of that bitch and we'd go swimming. My swimmies were inflated with more wet, mostly the liquid mold that was sapped out of my father's head wound, so usually I sank. My dick had a tent inside it that I could go hide in for sulking when my paper mask hurt. Shit was all I'd ever say back to her hmmming but I only said it to myself cause I didn't want to get smacked, though once I also said it to the black masseuse who came hid rolled in my shower curtain each morning and would watch me drop the soap on a rope tied to my mother in her cradle in the other kitchen, where one morning after Kim Kardashian's pussy finished with the cooking, mom would braid the pussy's hairs into a weekend vacation at the Honolulu Publix. In the first five minutes, no matter what treats we packed to keep her distracted with the family business, Kim Kardashian's pussy's vegina got really wasted off its own rot and rolled into town to throw its own early birthday party on the place where oil had made the water hard, and it wouldn't answer when we skreeked its name over the beach PA or into the wound in our father, propped on his ass under the bacon ceiling. Then, when Kim Kardashian's pussy's vegina came back, six to eight days later, by which point all of my family had gone home but me, Kim Kardashian's pussy had a flower on its lapel and a little bell between its teeth that it would ring and ring, and when I took by the hand it would giggle and fart through its nostrils and there was always this awful violin noise, and soon we couldn't stand up, and soon we heard my mom's voice shouting through the sunset at Kim Kardashian's pussy's vegina to stop being so fucked and getting its fuck all over me, her only son, and the vegina blushed and threw up a little, and I guess that's the first time I thought anything about anybody.

Yeah, cool, Blake, ok.

I should talk to myself on here more often.

I liked Virus 1 by Brian Oliu in Brevity Magazine, I've actually seen Oliu around a lot recently and like what he is doing.

Finished another draft of EVER today, I think it is very close to final, I am thankful to have something to edit because I can't really get my head on straight enough to write clearly in more than a few hundred words at a time. I haven't been able to read much either. I don't know what's going on.

I want to stop drinking coffee, I will pay a Mormon to come and stand next to me with a biscuit that they can stick in my mouth whenever I try to drink more coffee, it's not doing me any good anymore, maybe I should developed a spiced ham addiction, I bet if you eat enough you'd hallucinate in a way that would be just as beneficial as caffeine.

A famous author this weekend asked me if a watermelon can really be raped, which Yes, a watermelon can be raped.

A white and gold donkey just came into my typing, no shit.

What is an attractive way to get a semi-long complex sentence tattooed on your body? I don't know where, arms? I don't have any conception of the way things like that would be arranged, I can't even put a sofa in a room neatly, but I found a sentence I think I want, I also want some Cookie Crisp so I can remember concretely that that shit is nasty.

Sunday, September 21, 2008

Didi Menendez did a portrait of me for her American Poet Portraits series, it is from my YouTube shaving video, it is really nice, wild colors, thank you Didi for the inclusion. Check it out in full size and with her other works on the site.

Last night saw David Byrne at Chastain in Atlanta, it was pretty incredible, he played songs from the three Talking Heads collaborations with Eno, the setlist included:

I ZIMBRA, HOUSES IN MOTION, HEAVEN, CROSSEYED & PAINLESS, ONCE IN A LIFETIME, LIFE DURING WARTIME, TAKE ME TO THE RIVER & THE GREAT CURVE

He also played HELP ME SOMEBODY from the MY LIFE IN THE BUSH OF GHOSTS record, which was really interesting to hear done live, as that album is mostly all samples, and instead Byrne sang the sampled vocals himself, and the music translated really well, it sounded like a REMAIN IN LIGHT b-side or something, that was the only track from that record they did.

They also played a lot off the new Eno/Byrne record, which has some cool stuff but overall wasn't as exciting as the old. Still nice to hear, and better than most.

I was really surprised with how strong the band sounded, the set up was pretty much exactly as the band was in STOP MAKING SENSE, albeit with new musicians, who were on point.

Everyone on stage was in all white, including Byrne, the musicians, a set of three backup soul singers, and a crew of people who did weird choreographed dances all through the set, which often tended to include Byrne, it was fun.

Byrne seemed really happy and upbeat, in fact they extended the 2nd encore when the crowd wouldn't stop screaming, Byrne seemed amazed and was laughing, said, 'Well, this isn't the song you'd usually play in this moment, but it's the only other one we know' and they did another from the new record.

The crowd was weird, it's an 'old people' venue, there were a lot of grandparents there sitting and nodding along or staring, there were a lot of drunk fratboys yelling for Psycho Killer, there was a lot of electronic device use and talking. After we got up a lot closer to the stage it was really nice, it felt like a huge street party.

Right next to me, during HEAVEN, there is the line, 'When this kiss is over it will start again' and the dude who had been trying unsuccessfully to rub his junk up on this girl in between beers goes, 'Man that would be awesome,' referring to the lyric, and the girl said 'Huh?' and he goes 'If the kiss was over and then it started again. That would be awesome' and then he kind of leered at the girl in his khaki shorts and button up as if this would do the trick, as if she'd want him now, and the girl went back to text messaging.

Overall a really good show, I imagine it was almost like seeing Talking Heads.

Overall also, though, probably the last 'big' show I will ever go to. My list of people I want to see before I die is pretty much all X'd off. I'd still like to see Michael Gira but he rarely seems to tour.

Thursday, September 18, 2008

Today is 'be nice + positive day,' thought of by me, though I am off to a late start, having started the day with stinkin' caused by me, so it's like a trade off.

Anyway,

Here is a dumb poem, it doesnt have a name, its not really a poem, i wrote it in like 30 seconds, while feeling empty on the phone:

Can I have a baby just so there's a baby to kiss sometimes?I just went outside and watched my shadow fling its arms.I fling my arms when I walk back from the mailbox with nothing.Each morning I bet our mailman drinks whole milk:this so he has the energy to keep on coming, though if it were me,you would never get a thing. I would probably go to the bankand sit outside and watch people coming in and out with or w/o $$and I would hand them everything I had. I wouldn't get to stay a mailman very long, but then there would be daysto go home and lay on the sofa and caress the black neon bag that comes built into everyone but that only mailmen know about.

Hey Blake, go fuck yourself.

Thanks, Blake.

Ok, there's also this:

And now here is a Gchat I had with Shane Jones yesterday that made me feel better about things n things. I realize posting gchats is a thing that happens, but it kind of helped me feel a change in momentum, I think, there should be more changes in momentum more, WE TALKED ABOUT ALL THE BIG ISSUES, it's really long, we both get boners, so here, don't look:

PEOPLE

12:46 PM Shane: Funny, your blog reminds me of Blake Butler's, except yours is calmer. - molly gaudry me: haha you do seem calmer12:47 PM i wish i was calmer Shane: no one wants to be calm i'm one step away from being boring me: haha let's not go ovrboard12:50 PM Shane: that picture on your last post shook me to the core it's terrifying me: oh god i know what the fuck12:51 PM Shane: could you imagine driving and seeing that it remeinds me of kafka's in the penal colony some kind of mass destruction like who designs that12:57 PM someone is in control of that thing ugh me: i bet a mexican Shane: everythign is just so depressing lately me: no english, 3.45 an hour Shane: i got coffee this morning and a woman was yelling at the worker "i want an early gray tea!" she just kept saying EARLY GRAY TEA me: evertyhing Shane: not earl gray EARLY right in my ear12:58 PM me: that's when you open up your mouth and put your mouth on their mouth Shane: i couldn't do it i was so close to saying something but i'm a pussy me: and show her her teeth with your teeth i gotta be in a real bad mood to speak up Shane: yeah12:59 PM me: just not worth it usually but its fun when you do fuck people1:00 PM Shane: fuck most people me: there you go being calm1:01 PM Shane: i am what's happenign to me i have no sass anymore me: everything is hard

DEATH

Shane: did tao have a post about not carring about david foster wallace then he took it down or something1:02 PM me: yeah, well, not quite about not caring, but about having accepted death i wrote a long comment to him Shane: what did it say1:03 PM me: about how it felt disingenuous and then he took it down i felt bad maybe hvaing caused him to take it down1:07 PM i have to think1:08 PM if any other author one i didnt care about in that way killed himself like bret easton ellis i would probably be like 'big deal'1:09 PM Shane: i realize it's hitting you pretty hard, i still get upset when i think of richard brautigan killing himself me: i just wonder if i would be sassy and rude about it with anyone else1:10 PM probably i would just keep my mouth shut but part of me can undersztand why people are saying things like that they dont have a personal connection to it, why should they care, besides the humanist aspect of it1:11 PM Shane: people should care, people should have somethign called compassion especially amongst the community of writers but i think people that read dfw, especially you, really had that close connection of reader and writer1:12 PM but people are shitty, the just are i don't know what i'm trying to say1:14 PM me: no you are right they should, or should at least keep bullshit to themselves1:15 PM Shane: but i think, for me at least, it's also really scarry and a feeling of hopelessness...that someone like DFW with his mind and intellect and humor, etc, saw the world that dark and took his own life..i mean, it should feel like a wake up call to people me: yes that is really what it is frightening1:16 PM Shane: i woke up the other night at like 4am thinking about that and i told melanie the next mornign that i just felt so lonely just really isolated1:17 PM me: yeah i've been feeling that its really hard to get over like to me, he accomplished the greatest feat in literature and it was not enough so what the fuck are we doing Shane: right1:18 PM me: though he did have chemical problems Shane: i ask myself that question all the time what the hell am i doing me: every single day i think

MOTIVATION

Shane: i'm putting together a chapbook of poems, well i was last night and i just started laughing like it was just so absurd to me "chapbook" 17 poems1:19 PM like why am i doing this me: yeah exactly Shane: should we just write more books? i don't know1:21 PM me: i really dont know keep going for what Shane: i'm not sure 10 minutes1:32 PM Shane: have you been writting me: very slowly1:35 PM Shane: i watched the charlie rose interview with DFW yesterday you can stop me if you don't want to talk about this anymore me: no its ok1:36 PM Shane: but they were talkign about how dfw had a semester off coming up me: i love that interview Shane: and rose asked him what he was going to do and his reply was so great "well, if the past repeats itself, i'll probably write an hour a day and bite my knuckles thinking about writing for eight hours a day" me: haha yes, i remember that perfect1:37 PM Shane: just awesome and charlie rose was just starring at him me: i want to watch those again, and videos of him reading, but it bothered me too much to see him talk1:39 PM Shane: i understand that

CREATION

1:43 PM me: so you finished your edits Shane: yeah adam said they were great and he was impressed1:44 PM me: that is good1:45 PM Shane: yeah, i'm still excited about it i started writing something else me: a novel? Shane: yeah1:46 PM me: excellent projects help Shane: i think so i mean, i'm not sure where this one is going1:47 PM and i'm also worried it's going to suck, etc me: those are fun concerns i like that kind of mode1:48 PM Shane: i'm kind of concerned with how the text looks on the page i want to do somethign different from light boxes but i'm not sure what to do with this one1:50 PM me: what have you been doing with it Shane: well, i only have a few thousand words and the format is turning into the same as light boxes which i don't want something will hit and i'll get excited1:51 PM i plan on going through my bookshelf tonight and looking at text playing around, etc i like the idea of isolated sentences, but then connecting them, twisting them, etc i'm really not sure1:52 PM me: isolating is really helpful i thin k Shane: i can't just write stacks of paragraphs me: i forget who said this maybe it was delillo or vollmann but they said when they are writing they put each sentence on its own page1:53 PM then collapse after each is perfect i cant remember who it was but that sounds nice Shane: that sounds really comforting to me1:54 PM maybe i'll do something like that i have to play around for a while1:55 PM me: yes1:56 PM Shane: what novel was written in all columns me: i know books that use a lot of columns, but not one that does it all the way, that i can think of the people of paper has the best use of columns i've seen1:57 PM Shane: yeah1:58 PM well i have two characters i was thinking of using columns seems kind of lame though me: sounds like a fun idea cris mazza has a great story that makes columns work really well i think that's where plascencia stole it Shane: hmmmm me: 'is it sexual harassment yet?'2:00 PM Shane: i just pulled it up the columns idea is interesting2:01 PM or the idea of two characters and you get two blocks of text on each page from them, kind of playing off each other me: right2:05 PM i think i just want to make something really brutal like take bleak to the nth degree, pull out all stops2:06 PM Shane: fuck yeah me: if i am going to be called bleak, i want to show what concept of bleak really is because i've never felt bleak really2:07 PM i think i can make blood meridian look calm Shane: i like where you're going with this

SURREALISM

2:08 PM Shane: i think about the concept of "surrealism" a lot and writing a book that just explodes the notion of surrealism...like just an explosion of imagination me: yeah surrealism never got done right i think not to its fullest Shane: no, no way2:09 PM i think i want to explore it more me: i was really concerned with that when i did those two novels back to back Shane: most of the stuff people tell me to read that is surreal really isn't like i don't get it like with that fucker andre breton me: ugh breton is nothing zip Shane: i know2:10 PM me: its not even surreal in any way Shane: i don't get it the whole movement is interesting, but... me: its just another -ism more talk than rock2:11 PM have you read any donald antrim Shane: yeah, i have2:12 PM me: i like how he uses surrealist stuff, its not a full on surreal, but it brushes against it nicely the verificationist Shane: i didn't read that one2:13 PM me: you read elect mr robinson? Shane: yeah and i read his memoir book me: that one is good, its not as good as the other 2 though i think ugh, the memoir Shane: yeah, the memoir me: fuck that thing Shane: fuck memoirs me: 100 brothers and the verificationist, those are much better than the other 22:14 PM though i do like the chapter in his memoir about trying to find the right mattress that was the only good part it hought Shane: that was great and how he sends it back doesn't he spend like twelve grand on some kind of super mattress me: haha yeah2:15 PM Shane: i wanted to read 100 brothers but never did2:16 PM me: its pretty wonderful Shane: surreal? me: there really are 100 brothers they all hang out its got a lot of surreal to it, yeah2:17 PM the verificationist is moreso surreal in execution but still, yeah, not quite what i've always thought of as what the thing could have been/ be2:18 PM Shane: i'm reading the wiki page on surrealism me: what does it say Shane: Surrealist works feature the element of surprise, unexpected juxtapositions and non sequitur2:19 PM me: "Jeepers!"2:20 PM Shane: maybe the painters got surrealism down, but the writers didn't2:21 PM dali did pretty nice shit with it et al2:23 PM thank you for the talking shane, it made me feel better in several ways somehow Shane: i feel like i have some energy now

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

There are a lot of days, and all of them are short, and I am sitting up here at noon again in front of the computer with all my new mail read and RSS feed clicked and observed, the first thing every day I wake up for. Every evening I go to bed feeling the impending sense of what I'll launch myself wholeheartedly into the next morning but often when I wake up and find myself sitting here with coffee, staring, turning on Gchat in case someone has something to say that will click my head some, I don't know, how many of these days can be stared through?

I've been thinking a lot about motivation and intent and 'why this' in the past few days, spooled not only by the suicide of the author many days had been the benchmark I thought of when I thought 'why am I writing at all,' but also by the weird ongoing lanyard of submissions, correspondence, editing, mailing, receiving texts, opening texts, staring at names, the random skewed email from someone who read, the long laundry list of shit foaming against the print industry like welltide seeming further every other week, everything, my bills, the blackmark of credit I've somehow slurped up in the past year despite all my other years of having more than enough money to do what I wanted, election bullshit and my scorn at the idea anything can be changed by someone identifiable to mass groups, the rough battle it is to get anyone who doesn't write themselves just to pick a damn thing up while two beers in is like the baby's bathwater,

,

,

,

I don't know. I've found myself saying I don't know so often in the past few days, and though I think I'd worked myself into some warm way of nodding off right around 3 AM each night somehow I'm back to staring even then, I'm having dreaming of past teachers and arguments over what book is where, benign weird dreams in libraries with Amy Hempel looking at my head while I tell her about what I want to do. I think I have 7 different projects I've been pushing each tinily forward each afternoon between the slur of the internet, 'the number one cause of insomnia,' with four books finished in the past however long and some kind of real benchmark movement for me in that field, it seems like I don't know where to go, like why am I not wearing a suit and using this brain I'm supposed to be blessed with to have enough money to not give a fuck about paying however much for whatever food or going somewhere when I feel like it.

I remember early on when I first started writing voraciously, I was consistently pushed forward by the thought 'If I can just get one book out, I will never feel sad again, you won't be able to knock me down with a bulldozer, I could smile in peace,' and yet with some of that impending now, as gracious and excited and electric as I've felt in certain moments, in the long run I think that that overall shift of feeling has not and will not happen, that I feel exactly the same as I ever did, that my impression of what it will feel like was very misplaced, there was/is no shift. That's been a hard realization, and maybe it will change as things become more real, I don't expect it to, maybe it is good for me to feel this. One in another of a series of hard realizations that though, while I'm blessed to have found a way to have so much time to work on what I want instead of rat-racing, there's a sense in me, and with the concordance of the way just everything in the world seems coming down now, that I don't know. That I don't know. I could keep saying it in hypnosis the same way I find myself walking around the house repeating meaningless drivel rap-lyric style the way I do most days, to the point that my loved ones have learned to drown me out from it because otherwise I would have by now driven them over. I could walk into a room filled with people who have known me for years, fall down in the floor barking and squelching profanity, making PEEP PEEP PEEP sounds through my nostrils, they wouldn't even have to flinch, which is a nice thing, I think, about them and about me, that there is something there but I don't know what.

The words are 'I don't know'

So I don't know. I know writing is the only thing that keeps me the halfied version of sane I still have, and that if I didn't have this desk to come sit at and spurt my fingers on I don't know if I'd even have the nerve to say 'I don't know' still. I don't feel sad most days, I whistle a lot, there are songs, most days I am full of that half-babble that seems like something, something, but there is another kind of something, some kind of glaze, some kind of 'huh' that seems ridden over everything, to the point that these internet words and these online people and these years of staring must be something, maybe they are paying my mortgage in silence, maybe I really will stand in line at the grocery store next to Tupac, maybe language poets will learn to remember they are just people, maybe the bar menu will have a picture of a cat on it that when you touch will begin to read aloud THE SOUL IS NOT A SMITHY, maybe have a tattoo in my crevice I am going to find soon and begin feeding from, maybe I will win at poker again, maybe the semi-pricey Mexican dinner on our credit cards will make us dream good, maybe the nightmare is a little crab in the beach hole and I will lick it yum,

God I am dumb

I don't know,

or more probably I do know just exactly and we're neck-wading in the whole milkand the Ken Griffey Jr. rookie cards are in the mail, and mmmmm

Sunday, September 14, 2008

I don't know. I can't think of words to say. I feel today a little kicked in the chest, more so even now than yesterday when I first heard on the telephone what had happened: that the person I've most looked up to as an artist, who is in fact the major reason I began writing in the first place, has killed himself at 46. At 46, with so much there already, but what seemed the promise of so much more. I don't know. I don't know.

I wasn't going to type anything about this subject I thought but now having half-slept all night with the words in my head, questions, absolute confusion and sense of loss, I don't know. I need to get some of this out of me.

I asked for a copy of INFINITE JEST for Christmas during my second year of undergrad. I don't remember where I'd heard to ask for it. I wasn't reading a lot at the time. I'd always been a voracious reader as a child and young teen, but after getting over the Beats I pretty much had stopped finding things that made me feel the way books had made me feel, why I read. I was a computer science major at Ga Tech. Things were heading in one way.

I began reading INFINITE JEST during the end of Christmas break into the beginning of classes at Tech again. I remember, by the middle of the first scene with Hal's broken perspective among the board at the tennis academy, being so consumed with not just the story of the book, but the construction of each sentence. I had not understood the sentence as a thing of this sort of function. That sentences could be this huge, this important line by line, could do this much. There seemed a certain way of mind that I had not known was possible with words on paper, in that Wallace seemed to be able to condense moment-to-moment inner-thinking in such a way so good that it became funny. INFINITE JEST is one of a very small handful of books I've read that have made me laugh out loud, gut-wrenching laughter, the kind with tears, and not because of jokes and one-liners, but because of the overarching Holy Fuck of it all, the sheer entertainment of it even in face of such scope, human consciousness on paper.

I remember reading the book in physics classes during lectures I should have been paying attention to. I spent pretty much every spare moment, and moments that should not have been spare, reading each sentence not as if it were a story, but in the face of something huge.

While I was reading INFINITE JEST I wrote my first story. I began to spend all my time writing rather than working on computer science. Next semester I changed my major to the most liberal arts thing I could find at a technical school, and after that I began my MFA. Via Wallace I began finding more and more important books, but still even to this day none that would hit me the way that book did: whole, truckload a-ha, this is what you should aspire to make with your life.

After INFINITE JEST, having read it 3 times through and some sections and other stories and essays countless times, like many who feel the way about that book and his writing that I do, I entered, and still have not ever shed, an obsession with his work that fueled not only my passion as a reader, but as a touchstone for how to expand. Among all the contemporary fiction I've read over the past 5-8 years, (through him, his reading lists or things mentioned in interviews, or blurbed, I read anything his name came near, I read OMENSETTER'S LUCK, I read IN WATERMELON SUGAR, I read WITTGENSTEIN'S MISTRESS, etc., etc.), and yet David Foster Wallace was doing something that, more so than any other writer even close to him, that no one else could do. There will never be another author who captures with such pure power the notions of recursive thought, deep focus paranoia and obsession, the massive sprawl of sentences so chiseled and of such span that one could spend hours with, the description of human emotions and understandings that have never likewise been put into words, not so aptly, so in the face of the thing itself, and often with a sense of humor that proves comedy can be more, sentimentality that does not reek, the function of apocrypha and embedded implications hidden in the sheer mass of something.

Fuck.

Fuck.

Fuck.

I want to say there is something that can be made ok in this but I do not understand.

If there's anything that might come of his death, it might be that more people will read INFINITE JEST in particular, as it is probably the most spoke-of-more-than-read pieces of writing of all time. And though his essays and short fiction both are towers in their own way and all vital to me (god, the essays) (god, OBLIVION) (god, it all), it is INFINITE JEST that is a tower among all things, in my mind.

Fuck.

I don't know. I am trying to understand this. I am babbling but I am going to keep doing it. I feel squashed some, like I can't think of books the same way. How this person will never create again makes me ill. There's not another author that I've ever been so entwined with, felt like a brother of the mind of. I wish I could understand the removal. It brings a new light, too, to the quite-present discussions of suicide and depression that run through his books, which I had always grasped as something he understood in a philosophical way, that he had captured the brunt of in the overwhelming fuck of everyday movement, but now it seems much more burned into the page.

'The Depressed Person': How will I ever read this story again and not bawl?

'Good Old Neon': the self-reflexivity at the end (the first time of which I read I remember sitting in a room just staring afterward for several hours, trying to figure out what'd just happened to me), how will it ever not feel like a shriek?

The inscription written in one of my many copies of INFINITE JEST (I think 5 at different times), which he wrote to me when I flew to Boston to see him read on the Oblivion book tour, in which I sat in a church in a state of real religious awe as he read to us and sweated and answered my question about his pseudonym Elizabeth Klemm: To Blake, in the mind-bonding heat, ____

There always seemed something in his eyes, I don't know, I didn't think it was this,

The first sentence of the first story in OBLIVION 'Mister Squishy,' one of my favorite pieces of the short story as art, the unexpected, verbal inertia: how I can hope by reading this that this indeed is a key to something, that this man is not gone, another veil: The focus group was then reconvened in another of Reesemeyer Shannon Belt Advertising's nineteenth-floor conference rooms.

Other things, all of them.

I don't know.

I never thought I would feel this way about the death by suicide of someone I did not know directly. I don't get upset about public figure deaths, but to me this person is not only a public figure. I can't help feeling like a mentor, a brother, who changed my life for me even unknowing, has been hobbled. How can someone who would bring such light into my life and so many other lives be gone in this way, with so much more inside him. There will never be another book I lay awake waiting, sweating, to get my hands on, to such extent, not like that. There will never be more of these words that whenever I feel like I can't write anymore, I open to a page and within sentences begin to feel ok again. This is so much left behind, but it still feels wrong, like a person who should not be gone is gone. I feel dumb blabbering like this but I can't understand it. There is something different now. I really feel like a part of me has been smothered out a little, like something is different now, like something is fucked. I can not imagine a larger loss for not only literature but art, for the mass consciousness. I want to understand. I do not understand.

Saturday, September 13, 2008

He was sitting with another dude in a not-so crowded bar on a Thursday night, I became slightly hysterical, most no one I was with knew who he was, BOB was at 97 Estoria, I can verify with the lesions on my knee

Fuck

I did not let him see me

Last night on our way to the movies we entered semivision, the earth was uprooting, there were columns of rot in our tea

I had some fish tacos, first time ever, they were ok, I had some jelly beans they were better

In the men's room before the movie started I came in and there was an Indian young man standing at least a foot away from the urinals he was dressed to go to the club

He had his dick out and he was holding it, it was fat and weird and solid black

I mean dark as night, you couldn't imagine a blacker dick, coal black, his skin was light brown, there was no differentiation in penis color from head to shaft, it was the first thing you saw when you turned the corner to enter the bathroom

The guy was standing there not peeing, just holding his dick looking straight ahead at the tile wall, he did not move when I entered, he kept holding his black black dick

Maybe he was 'presenting' or maybe BOB was in his cock

I mean black not like black person but black like someone had colored it with a Sharpie and dipped it in oil

The thing was black

I moved past him, washed my face and hands in the sink, which had been my reason for entering, left

We saw Burn After Reading, I liked it, it made me laugh a lot, it pissed off some of the audience because it wasn't clearly 'about anything,' it reminded me most of Fargo, I am glad I liked it better than No Country, Malkovich and McDormand were really good, even Clooney didn't bother me, usually I hate him, I recommend the movie

Some other things happened

Ariana Reines read in Atlanta, she read from both of her books, I thought she was funny, she was also nice, the reading was good, I met more good Atlanta people, fun

I and two friends and many others who are interested and going to be started I think a monthly reading series in Atlanta fucking finally, it is aimed to begin next month

One poet one fiction writer, each with 20-30 min to read and answer questions, Atlanta will have words in their eyes

Thursday, September 11, 2008

I always get a little concerned when I see people arriving at this blog by having typed seemingly serious questions into Google, probably looking for some pertinent answer and instead ending up at this reservoir of mostly not-veiled sexual language, other ranting and blather. I realize that people searching for answers online are probably apt to go astray in their lives if I let them try to construe answers from all this bullshit, so in that light I decided it was time to start answering these Googled questions directly, hopefully in the long run creating a kind of alternative q/a encyclopedia.

Here is the first of such:

(from Tampa, Florida, 9/10/08, 7:36:17 PM)

Q: how does the baby know where my hand is on my stomach

A: Your baby is made of urine. Urine is a high-carbonate polymer, deciduous in certain climates, and highly volatile in the flesh of the mother. When you move your hand to touch your stomach, the baby feels a concurrent ache in the corresponding region of where you are touching, much like the method employed in Cuban Kewpie dolls purchased for destruction of a neighbor. When you touch yourself with the baby in you, the baby's burgeoning urine body translates the ache you have designed for it (lucky you!) into a chemical signal in its inner-forehead (and labia, if applicable), which will to no small extent dictate the drive, will, IQ, manner, employment schedule and lovability of your baby as he/she sheds the urine body and moves to mirror the body you, the mother, have built before him/her in the earthen wall. It is advised in all instances that the pre-birthing mother keep her fingers away from the belly loin unless she (he?) has been well instructed in the manner of plurification and wise-rubbing, in fear of damaging the baby's whole entire life. A mother's hands may be placed w/o fear of repercussion on the mother's (a) forehead (b) cheeks (c) face, other (d) labia, if the child-to-be is son (e) thighs (f) eyes or buttocks (g) mate (h) earlobes (i) windows (j) personal urine (k) wig hair (l) purse.

I hope that more thoroughly answers the question, ma'am.

The internet is dangerous.

- - -

Picked up Dzanc Books's Best of the Web 2008 last night at Borders. Hadn't realized my story The Sentence from Alice Blue Review was listed in the book's Notable Stories of the year. That was a nice surprise, thanks to all of those involved for that. Regardless, the book is a nice collection of all sorts of different kinds of writing, and highlights a wide array of the kind of stuff being done online. I am glad someone is doing this, it is important, I think.

Also thanks to Mike & Ryan at Noo for nominating my List Prayer for Best of the Net (a similar but different enterprise by Sundress from the Dzanc book) 2008. Kind sirs.

- - -

I had to fight myself hard last night to keep from laying down in the floor at Borders, I felt an overwhelming sense of something burning, I leaned a lot to both sides, I was looking at something, there was a whipple

I like when people say declarative sentences in an interrogative fashion, such as: 'I can get a swig of your drank?'

That happens a lot in Atlanta.

I have probably been asked that specific sentence more than 12 times.

They are playing contemporary lite-r&b in this coffee shop. The guy that usually plays Pavement isn't here. I should go.

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

A really good thing is happening, it seems. I'm not going to talk about it specifically for a while.

It concerns things that will manifest themselves almost one full year from now. It concerns words and time with words and like that.

I don't know, I wonder if I will get to a point that I do enough or have done enough on any given day that I feel satisfied or relaxed. I don't even know what I am looking for, I have found threads of it, and yet the more I do my nature seems to stay in one point, when it comes to certain things.

That is very vague.

All of this blather is vague-ish, I should probably delete it.

Things right now are very good.

I should feel gracious.

I really do, it is only in myself that I feel misaiming, or like every day is so short, or that I haven't found the button that slows the slur speed or something.

Today I reread a lot of Gary Lutz's STORIES IN THE WORST WAY. It'd been too long. On a sentence by sentence level it is probably one of the most pristine and wise books ever written. You could really take almost every single line and put it on a page by itself and show it to someone and have them be taken aback a little, or at least look and remember the words a while after, even out of context, more so than other words.

If you haven't read it, read it, move it to the top of your list. If you've read it, read it again. That's good advice.

I am a purple colored cistern.

I don't know what to do when I realize certain things.

Nice boy good boy.

There is a new issue of DIAGRAM up, I always get a little giddy when they put up a new one, I read it all, I usually click through and find the fiction or things shaped like fiction then I read the contributor notes then I read the poems, I like the author notes they let authors supply that illuminate or deviate from the text.

This issue has the fabulous Kathy Regina and Atlanta brethren Benjamin Solomon, both of those pieces are really strong and make me want to write.

Diagram, maybe that's the best thing about them: they make me want to write.

Sometimes I will keep certain texts on Diagram open on my browser behind the MS Word while I am writing and peek back and forth at them, I like the shapes of the texts.

I like the show I LOVE MONEY, I can't help it, I have watched every episode, some several times, when I miss one I feel anxious, I look for it to appear on ON DEMAND, I check sometimes often to see if they will update and put the new one on there, I can't help it.

WHO WANTS TO BE A MILLIONAIRE? has a new format, they tell you the categories of the questions now all in advance, and the contestants now have limited amounts of time to answer, it makes me sad.

I really don't watch that much TV, except when I feel bloated or it is very late and I have written all day.

I had a sentence in my head in the car today and I forgot it, that sentence was going to be a book

Every day I could probably make several sentences that would become a book, it's not an issue

I feel haphazard and giddy

I forget everything unless I write it down or don't forget it

Each snardvunt is a palimpeses in my gunt.

I am writing another book now, I can only do a couple lines a day on it, the lines are very broken up on the page, it about a woman who works in a grocery store, I think I am ripping off David Markson again, I don't care, it is going to take me a long time to write it I think, I want the book one day to be 450-550 pages of mostly single sentences or small sentence clusters making up each paragraph, I like reading books like that, I want it to be my semi-minimalist version of THE TUNNEL

THE TUNNEL is the greatest accomplishment in literature, as is also INFINITE JEST

DEAR EVERYBODY, as predicted, is already taking heads off around the nation.

There is also a new issue of Keyhole Magazine on the racks now, I read more than half of it this afternoon and really enjoyed it, they continue to do new things in a high quality burn em up fashion, things are moving,

The reading in Atlanta last night went really well, I couldn't have asked for more from a town pretty spare in the way of readings, we had a great turn out, thanks to everyone who came, and to the bands and Zach Plague and Todd Dills, who were both awesome to hang out with. I am working with some folks to make it a more regular thing very soon.

The reading of Sam Pink's play went down really well, big ass steak knives and all. The video turned out pretty good, it's going to take me a while to get around to uploading it, I will do it.

Umm, more to talk about therein quite soon.

There's also a new Games themed issue of Hobart on the way out which looks like it will be the best thing they've done yet, including work by friends Kim Chinquee, Barry Graham, Matt Bell, Jennifer Pieroni, Brandi Wells and many excellent others. They launched a bonus-features site to go along with the issue wherein I wrote an alternate ending for Barry's story about texas hold em, which was a lot of fun, you should buy the issue of read the story and all else.

There is a lot to read there, I really like Mike Alber's thing on playing Magic, i don't give a fuck what you say Magic is the best game ever created, i played it when i was very fat, I had to cash in my cards to be allowed to lose my weight

it makes risk look like a thing a granny could destroy with one scooch of her's v-v.

Sunday, September 7, 2008

I was going to write a long post about narrative vs non-narrative fiction, the marriage of the two, my amusement at people who think that writing has to be 'about' something, my confusion over why people feel most satisfied by 'stories' that have a full resolution and plot arc, character development. I hate hearing people talk about their 'character' in their story or book, 'tell me about your character, who is he?,' no really who the fuck is he? He isn't anyone.

Charles Dickens is dead.

Long live Charles Dickens.

Not going to let myself get blasted off on that, as I ended up writing two stories for a prompt for an anthology coming in the nearish future, one called REALISTIC STORY and one called UNREALISTIC STORY, it probably more aptly says what I think than if I tried to say it here, so I won't babble anymore.

Except to say (yeah, I couldn't stop myself) that the rule: WRITE WHAT YOU KNOW, is probably the most damaging and stilted piece of advice in all of writing instruction. If you are writing entirely off of what you know, I will probably end up closing your book and turning on the TV.

SHEER GENIUS, a show about hairstylists who compete on tv to cut hair, is still a show that is on air. It sounds like something out of George Saunders.

I am afraid of that tweedy neon orange elf who is one of the judges on there, he looks like he's going to melt into an easter basket.

I got contributor copy of the new issue of 11:11, it is really nice looking, I have another list in it (please kick me), as well as stuff by Jack Spicer, Terry Bisson, a lot of others, I feel lazy, here is what it looks like:

I am going to write a book called 'Vegans on Hard Drugs,' it makes me want to fold myself up, I don't understand vegans who do drugs, maybe I could figure it out if I tried to write the book, I would never really do it.

Tonight at the Atlanta reading we will be performing Sam Pink's 'Play for Two People' that is in the first issue of No Colony, I am excited, it is a funny play, and good. I am going to try to film it, I hope it works.

This video by Sam Pink is the shit, Sam Pink should be a stand up comedian, I would go see him.

Please stop talking about kombucha.

Please stop talking about Barack Obama.

Please no more beer.

Please

They are making Martin Amis's LONDON FIELDS into a film now, Amis doesn't kill me usually but LONDON FIELDS is really incredible, about a guy who plays darts during the apocalypse, there's a really nasty baby in it, it is a great read if you are looking for a longer book, I don't see how they will make it into a movie without fucking it in the ass, the same way I am scared about BLOOD MERIDIAN (though I don't believe that one will ever really get done, Cronenberg or no), here is Vincent Gallo talking about the LONDON FIELDS script, talking shit about some people, Vincent Gallo.

Thursday, September 4, 2008

If you happen to be in Atlanta this Sunday September 7, I'm hosting a reading at WonderRoot on Memorial, with reading by Zach Plague (author of 'boring boring boring boring boring boring boring' new from Featherproof), Todd Dills (who edits 2nd Hand and wrote 'Sons of the Rapture' also from Featherproof), plus I'll be reading something from the new No Colony issue and selling them). In the midst of that will be two bands, one I used to be in Sleep Therapy and an awesome weird ambient joint called Lyonnais, it bodes to be a fun shit, it starts at 8:00 pm or so, please come, please fly from your locale, I will lick your face, have a baby with you (dinnerstyle), punch a goggle in the neck, yes.

BTW, if you haven't check out Zach's boring book yet, you really should. It's really one of the best looking books I've seen in a while, with all kind of weird font stuff and wild paper designs occuring, it clearly took a ton of typographic work and makes the text electric and exciting, I am reading it now and really getting kicks out of Zach's way of spinning, I've not seen much of anything like this before: it is something to hold in yr hands.

Also reading right now: Deb Olin Unferth's VACATION, man it is excellent. It's broken into a ton of little wild graphs and narrative windings, people following people following people: it is kind of perfect to read right now and I suggest you find one. Derek White was right a lot to compare it to Auster's NEW YORK TRILOGY, in that it has that weird enrobed air about it, but it also has those compacting Unferth sentences that leave you thinking after each because of how they turn. Excellence. Buy.

Shipped some more NO COLONYs out today: they are on de way. Kickin it.

Got my first blurb for EVER this weekend, from one of my absolute fiction idols, it made me giddy and eyes sweaty, it made me want to buy my own book. Doinks.

Other things becoming large.

Something is poking out inside my scrotum, I feel happier than yesterday

Matt Bell said nice things about my Ninth Letter story, Matt has an excerpt from his novel coming out in the next Lamination Colony (which I am about to begin building) which will claw you on the knee in a way that bleeds until you get to read the rest of the novel when it is released upon the public, you will go Oh

Man the new Of Montreal record sucks, I used to really like those guys, the new record is hyper-sexual in an off-putting way, he talks too much silly, I have to throw it out the window, I should have never taken cLOUDEAD's 'Ten' out of my cd player, I just need a two disc changer with that and 'Remain in Light,' I wish that wasn't a title already I would use it, it doesn't feel like I title one could steal

The story I am writing right now about a baby leaking to fill a house will the last story I write about bad things happening to babies, at least for a minute, what got me started on that?

I watched a thing about Jeffrey Dahmer the other day, it was good, I don't know

Wednesday, September 3, 2008

The winner of Justin Taylor's MORE PERFECTION DEPICTIONS OF NOISE is Matthew Simmons AKA The Man Who Couldn't Blog, because the idea of Diane Williams as my aunt makes my lasagna tummy say hi. Thanks to everyone who commented. You can buy Justin Taylor's book for a fair price at X-Ing Books.

I am feeling defeated today I am going to work today I have a vast sense of nothing right this minute.

Though oh, got contributor copies of the new issue of SALT HILL in the mail today. Literally when I opened the package and saw them I said, Holy Shit. They are hardback deep blue/black objects, with beautiful print. It's like a book book, I can hardly hold it. My tits vibrated.

Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Last night watched the documentary LYNCH, supposedly about Lynch's process particularly during the creation of Inland Empire. It was okay, kind of disappointing, as the directors seemed bent on coming off 'artsy' as opposed to just portraying Lynch in his habitats. There was a lot of random decay over the shots, cuts to bugs and weird noise, all just masking the subject and more annoying than illuminating, but overall, you can't hide Lynch's humor and talent for moving into nothing: he could talk about most anything and make it great. Plus there was a decent amount of him building, conjecturing, figuring out architecture, making up, painting, etc. A rental, for Lynch diehards, but not a must.

One of the things Lynch talked about was making a point to say that, in essence, that there used to be a big stigma that to make art you had to suffer, and that in creation there must be some pain invoked etc., but how this was completely untrue he thought, and that the more centered, the more happy and clear-headed you are, the more you can aim and get into the 'pool of creativity' (I love how he talks in such new age ways sometimes and makes it something to smile about rather than cringe), and that really the most ideas and most innovation often comes out of a pure state, and of happiness. That seemed right on to me, and a point people often dodge.

He also talked a lot about the particular process of Inland Empire, and how he had pretty much no idea what he was doing on any given day of shooting until he got into the room and faced the moment and began to souse out what was there. There's a moment in the film where Jeremy Irons calls with interest about the film, and Lynch kind of explains how he really doesn't even know what Irons will be doing, but that he'll be there, and you can imagine Irons's head as all these Lynch-words are coming in. At one point he says something about being simultaneously ecstatic and depressed as hell about not knowing what the film was going to turn into, and that he had never worked this way before.

I think I've been working in this mode a lot in the past year, with the same kind of weird ecstatic about it. Hearing him discuss things ideas helped me realize why it is I like Inland Empire so much, maybe even as my favorite of his films: the pure sense of unknowing and exploration seems right there on the screen, even for the characters, even for the actors, who are in the face of this kind of moving mutation, never really knowing what they are rubbing against.

Day before, we watched Abel Ferrara's BAD LIEUTENANT, which features Harvey Keitel as a crooked cop addicted to heroin and sportsbook: I really liked it a lot. I don't know how I hadn't seen this, but if you like very bleak, seedy movies with Harvey Keitel acting as pretty much the ultimate dirtbag, you should check it out. It's free on Comcast On Demand right now, at least in my area.

I have no idea why they put Keitel naked on the movie poster looking like he's ready to get his anus ate. I swear it's not dude porn.

Last night with visiting friend in car we were coming out of Decatur and at a stoplight this guy motioned for me to roll down the window, he looked like a young businessman on his off day, it was wet a little, we were both behind cars at a stoplight, when I got the window down he laughed and shouted, "Don't these people know it's Monday and not Sunday?!?" It was not clear in any way what he was referring to, he looked at us some more, he said, "Hey look what I'm listening to!!!" and turned up the music in his car to ear-splitting, it was Weird Al's EAT IT, he looked at us with his teeth, we drove off.